Microsoft-Nokia Hookup Leaves Symbian Devs Hanging

When Nokia teamed up with Microsoft to compete with smartphone rivals Apple and Google, the company was putting something valuable at risk: the loyalty of the programmers who create apps for the Nokia ecosystem.

After the companies announced their partnership last week, many die-hard Nokia programmers posted comments in forums and blog posts, expressing feelings of betrayal while threatening to code for Android instead.

“Developers are outraged because they feel that Nokia has betrayed them and sold them out to Microsoft,” said Andres Kruse, a programmer who makes apps with the Qt toolkit that will not be supported on Nokia’s Windows phones.

Developers have been a crucial resource for every major technology company’s media ecosystem. Programmers’ apps ultimately determine what a company’s product can do, and compelling apps can serve as a major attractor for consumer sales. Apple, Google, Nokia and Microsoft have aggressively recruited developers to make apps for their platforms as if they’re soldiers going to war.

Many consider Nokia’s Symbian operating system to be outdated compared to Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, but the Finnish phone company has cultivated a development community for over a decade. One of the most popular programming toolkits developed by Nokia is Qt (pronounced cute), an open source application framework that can create software that works on multiple platforms.

Microsoft and Nokia last week cut a deal, in which Nokia would adopt Windows Phone 7 as its primary mobile operating system. The agreement reportedly cost Microsoft billions of dollars.

One major side effect involved in the�Nokia-Microsoft partnership is that going forward, Qt will not be supported on Nokia’s Windows phones.�Nokia will continue to sell Symbian phones supporting Qt over the next two years, and Nokia claims it will continue to develop Qt, but eventually the company will transition to Windows Phone 7 as its primary OS.

“By shifting our future smartphone strategy away from Qt there is a strong sense of frustration from those who have invested in Qt for mobile development,” Nokia’s Aron Kozak said in a blog post. “We sympathize and we understand…. There is no magical statement we can make that proves things will be great, however we will try to maintain open communication as we progress.”

However, Kruse said he felt pressured to decide whether to recreate apps for Windows Phone 7, or to take an entirely new route such as Android.

“This is a company where it feels like they’ve been doing everything for them and now their company is capitulating,” said Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg, regarding Nokia developers who reacted negatively to the Microsoft partnership. “You can imagine that if Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, if he said ‘We’re done with Macintosh, we’re just going to build Windows PCs,’ you would’ve seen the same reaction in the Apple community.”

Brian Watson, Microsoft’s director of developer evangelism for Windows Phone 7, explained that Nokia and Microsoft opted against supporting Qt in order to maintain the integrity of the Windows Phone platform. Apps developed for all Windows Phones must be made with Microsoft’s native toolkits such as Silverlight and XNA.

“It may be a tough pill to swallow … but it’s for the better,” Watson said.” Any good developer is going to learn new languages coming along. It’s about finding the right tools to get the job done.”

But for Qt developer Kruse, Nokia’s switch to Windows Phone 7 means a lot more than just learning new programming languages. It’s a matter of the risks and costs involved in coding for one platform and then being locked in.�By contrast, with Qt, Kruse could make an app that runs on Nokia phones, Windows and Macs with minimal effort.

“In our case we make software for disabled people, and the market is so small that we simply cannot afford to develop for a platform whose success is by no means certain,” Kruse said. “Qt would have taken that risk away. Now we will have to go for Android. At least there we know this is not going away.”

Watson said Microsoft understands the importance of the Nokia developer community, and the company would work hard to keep the community loyal in light of the new partnership. To recruit developers for Windows Phone 7, Microsoft has handed out free devices for programmers to test their apps, and sometimes even offered to fly them to the Microsoft campus to get a crash course, Watson said.

“Our goal is making developers happy, making developers successful, making developers rich and famous,” Watson said. “They’re a very scarce resource and … I don’t want to lose any of them. We’re going to be very creative with things we can do.”

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